Sport seasons given shuffle

Football and rugby being played until late September, and cricket pushing into April may become the norm, as Sport NZ drives a reset of the traditional sporting seasons.

Winter sports at all levels are preparing for a delayed June start with Covid-19 having wiped out the past two months, which hastened a strategy already well advanced at head office in Wellington.

Under Sport NZ’s sport development lead Andrew Eade, a former chief executive of Auckland Cricket, the Balance is Better philosophy promotes children and youth playing multiple sports, specialising late, with an emphasis on fun and development rather than winning.

With that in mind, Eade led the recently released National Sport Season Transition Guidelines which was endorsed by 26 national sporting organisations including all the major codes.

It meant rebalancing the season start and end dates and a smooth transition from winter to summer codes. With winter sports now scheduled to run until late September, junior and club cricket will likely start in November with potential to extend into April.

‘‘Clearly with the shorter winter season there was a danger that, when sport got under way the winter codes would try to squeeze in as much content as they could, and try to go as late as they could for all the wrong reasons,’’ Eade said.

‘‘That would impact on the participants who would get squeezed between winter and summer. The 26 sports who signed up to that have all agreed in principle to the idea of sharing the pain.

‘‘If it’s possible, it makes sense to push back the start of the summer season to provide some more room for the winter season, and have the same thing happening at the back end of the summer.’’

While the guidelines are for this year, the document states it could become a benchmark for the future.

With an agreed one month break between seasons for council ground staff to work on the fields, it means a likely May start next year for winter codes which would also tie in with the start of school term two on May 3.

Eade described the season transition guidelines as a principle statement from the 26 NSOs which was filtered down to Sport NZ’s 14 regional sports trusts to apply and interpret.

There is no uniform cut-off between seasons across the country due to different climates, and ground availability.

In cricket, the likes of Hawke’s Bay and Canterbury can usually start their club seasons in early October whereas Wellington’s more volatile climes mean grass pitches aren’t usually ready until November.

Auckland Council, at a meeting with the region’s major sporting organisations on May 19, agreed to the framework of winter sports running until late September, an October hiatus for ground maintenance, and summer codes playing from early November to late March.

It stressed the need for sports to ‘‘align as closely as possible to the framework to avoid public confusion’’, when piecing together their respective schedules.

Bay of Plenty is also following a similar path.

The major challenge, Eade said, was the message filtering down to the hard core of volunteers who helped run community sport and had done things a certain way for a long time.

Eade said shorter seasons was another future goal for the Balance is Better philosophy.

‘‘Over the last 20 years, sports have each tried to expand their product wider and longer, almost in an attempt to professionalise community sport and pay for more coaches. That comes with all the dangers of kids being treated as commodities and the parents not knowing what to do.

‘‘We’re trying to wind all that back, so kids can access multiple sports. For the ones who are more competitively minded and more talented there are still pathways for them. We’re not saying that stops, but there’s a better balance to be had.’’